


most girls, or, the one where sakura grows up and gets a fangirl along the way

by theformerone



Series: resolve [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Haruno Sakura-centric, Haruno Sakura/Character Development, NejiSaku if you squint reeeeaaaallly hard, an easy way to explain why moegi is essentially an orange haired sakura, girls helping girls, metaphorically moegi metaphorically, moegi is SUPER helpful, sakura gets a pep talk, sakura's nindo is teaching ten year old girls how to kick ASS, when sakura said you could watch her from the background she didn't mean literally
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 05:42:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13264902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theformerone/pseuds/theformerone
Summary: In the years between Naruto’s departure and return, Sakura develops.Aggressively.She also gains a second shadow.





	most girls, or, the one where sakura grows up and gets a fangirl along the way

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Lesson in Humility](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11171910) by [aobears](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aobears/pseuds/aobears). 



> I haven't written Naruto fanfiction since AT LEAST 2007, so please go easy on me. I've also paid very little attention to canon since someone made the executive decision that Sasuke didn't need therapy or his revolution and also that apparently you can become hokage if you're a legacy and also deal with a lifetime of abuse from strangers with a sunshine smile on ya face OR that you should marry the man who has nearly murdered everyone you love. 
> 
> I DIGRESS. This whole thing happened because I suggested to aobears that Moegi would be a great fangirl to Sakura, but for some reason the writing bug bit me and here we are. 
> 
> Title is without a doubt lifted from Hailee Steinfeld's 'Most Girls'. 
> 
> Please enjoy my self indulgence.

In the years between Naruto’s departure and return, Sakura develops.

Aggressively.

After being taken down by something as flimsy as a pressure point ( _Really,_ Inner crows, _you got laid on your ass by something out of one of Kaka-sensei’s dirty novels, what kind of kunoichi are you?_ ) Sakura arrives at a second awakening.

She can cut her hair all she wants, but sudden bursts of adrenaline in high stakes situations will get her killed faster than they’ll make her a better shinobi. Sasuke is – well, he’s Sasuke, but if she’s going to bring him back at Naruto’s side, she can’t afford to let something like that happen ever again. Next time, he might not be so nice. Next time, he might put her in the hospital in a bed right beside Naruto’s. She doesn’t want to be that kind of victim.

So she asks around. Her apprenticeship with Tsunade was only a baby step. A massive, terrifying baby step into training grounds filled with meter deep craters and dented trees, but a baby step nonetheless. There’s Shizune, who is relentless with poisons and antidotes and poisons again, who teaches her how to wear her womanhood like a weapon; where to hide senbon in her sleeves, how to paint her lips red with cyanide without tasting a drop, how to hide shuriken in the heels of her boots.

It takes one exhausting year of Tsunade and Shizune tossing her back and forth, but Sakura grits her teeth, buckles down, and learns. When the two of them are busy, they foist Sakura off on the hospital rotations to beat basic care into her head until she can heal a concussion backwards upside down and in her sleep. This, coincidentally, is how she accidentally inserts herself into Team 8.

Kiba is a regular fixture in the hospital because he is a thirteen year old boy and thirteen year old boys are idiots. Chakra enhanced idiots. His concussion is mild and is gone within minutes after Sakura finishes her diagnostic and places her hands on either side of his head. One of the older medics, a Hyūga named Azami watches, Byakugan activated in case she makes any mistakes. Sakura won’t be an unsupervised medic for another year and a half but Azami is an uncharacteristically good humored Hyūga who hovers politely until she is done.

Kurenai is there, having brought Kiba to the hospital herself. Hinata and Shino both stand nervously nearby, one a bit more obvious about their hovering than the other. Sakura has seen nurses with worse bedside manner order entire squads out of a room for as much, but the failure of the Sasuke retrieval mission still makes bile rise in her throat so she lets all of them stay.

 _If you had just been enough,_ Inner hisses, _if you had just bothered to work harder, to be faster than him, you could’ve stopped him yourself. He wasn’t expecting you, you could’ve stopped him –_

“You’ve been apprenticed under Tsunade-sama for a year now, is that right, Sakura-chan?”

Sakura blinks back to Kurenai. The faint green glow of the Mystic Palm Technique has faded from her hands and Azami neatly takes over to examine her work. Akamaru whuffs from his place in Hinata’s arms.

“Yes, Kurenai-sensei,” she replies.

“You’ve been progressing very well, then,” the older woman says with a smile. “Tsunade-sama’s temper is legendary. She’s not one to suffer fools.”

Sakura fidgets. “Thank you, Kurenai-sensei.”

“No, Sakura-chan, thank you,” Kurenai says, pushing herself off the wall.

Azami has given Kiba the go ahead to stand, and Akamaru wiggles his way out of Hinata’s grasp to barrel into his partner’s shins. Hinata and Shino follow soon after.

“I’d expect nothing less from one of Kakashi-san’s pupils,” Kurenai continues. “Have a nice rest of your day.”

Sakura gets a loud thank you from Kiba and muted ones from Shino and Hinata as they all leave. She gnaws on her lip, feeling awkward. Azami gives her a sympathetic look before clapping her hands and announcing that they have rounds to finish.

The truth is, Sakura hasn’t seen much of Kakashi since Naruto left. As the last remaining member of Team Seven, she was notified when he was placed back on ANBU rotation. The sting of finding out without him being the one to tell her still smarts, but what could she say about it? How dare he serve the village where he’s needed most? How dare he leave her behind when she never took to his teachings or applied herself in the first place? He was the first person to tell her she had a natural aptitude for chakra control, that she’d be a genjutsu type if she wanted it – A genjutsu type – a _genjutusu_ type –

Team Eight hasn’t made it very far down the hall before Sakura accosts them. They turn around as they hear her shouting, each one concerned that maybe something went wrong with the healing she just performed. Their concern turns to shock as she bows low at the waist in front of Kurenai before dredging up courage through shame to ask, “Will you train me in genjutsu?" 

Kurenai does not, in fact, immediately train her in genjutsu.

Kurenai teaches Sakura how to hide. From Kiba and Akamaru’s noses and Shino’s kikachu, to how to creep into the blind spot of the Byakugan. Kurenai takes everything Sakura knows about the human brain and teaches her how to manipulate fight or flight responses, how to tell by body language and chakra signature when a person’s blood pressure spikes, when the adrenaline is moving, and when they’re on the verge of knowing when they’re in an illusion.

She makes Sakura read novels. Cheap thriller novels full of intrigue and gore and violence too ridiculous even for a shinobi. Sakura reads and reads until her imagination swells like a ripe fruit in spring. She sends her out with Kiba and Akamaru, who teach her how to channel chakra into the nose, to focus on her sense of smell until she can mimic scents in her genjutsu. She sends her out with Shino, who covers her with bug after bug until she can recreate the feeling of something hundred legged crawling out of her own ear.

And then Kurenai throws Sakura in the ring with Hinata, who by far is the best in Team Eight at recognizing and dispelling illusions (with or without her kekkei genkai) and tells Sakura to trap and hold Hinata while Kiba and Shino carry them both bodily across Konoha.

It is during one such training exercise that Team Eight (plus Sakura) stumbles across ( _into_ , bodily into) Team Gai.

Kiba goes flying into Lee, which means that Sakura is also flying into Lee, which subsequently means that Lee goes flying into Gai, who, despite only having two hands, manages to catch all of them by their collars.

Akamaru is amused. Neji, who eyes Shino’s grip on Hinata (who has just broken Sakura’s third illusion and is working her way through the fourth) is not.

“Sorry, Gai-sensei,” Kiba says, scratching the back of his head. He’s without his usual hoodie today, because wearing that and carrying Sakura in muggy Konoha summer is akin to walking backwards into Hell. “We got kind of carried away with an exercise.”

“Not to worry, Kiba!” Gai says, letting them down easy. “The next generation of Konoha shinobi training together is a wonderful thing!”

“Sakura-san!” Lee shouts, “It is good to see you again after so long!”

“Yeah, Lee-kun,” Sakura manages to reply. “It’s nice to see you, too.”

Sakura’s concentration is shot to hell, but the telltale tug on her chakra that means Hinata is closing in on her fifth and final genjutsu snaps her back to attention. Her hands move into another set of seals before she can think too hard about it, layering a sixth and seventh layer over her genjutsu before she feels safe enough to hover a hand over the back of Hinata’s head. She runs a brief diagnostic. It proves to be a fatal mistake. The sudden change of chakra is a disruption that Hinata notices two layers deep in the illusion, and she snaps through layers five and six almost simultaneously.

“Shit!”

Sakura slams a hand over her mouth as soon as the curse comes out, though she knows she’s not in company that cares. Kiba outright laughs at her, Shino merely adjusts his glasses on the bridge of his nose.

Neji still looks the standard breed of Hyūga constipated, but Tenten has a thoughtful look on her face. So does her sensei.

“So what’s this training exercise?” Tenten asks.

It’s Shino who answers.

“We have to capture and transport an enemy ninja from the east side of the village to the west side. Why? So that we can gauge our abilities not only as a tracking based squad, but also as a capture based squad.”

Tenten puts a finger to her chin, eyes narrowing the faintest bit. “Why is Hinata-san the enemy? Wouldn’t her Byakugan make her a better choice for capturing instead of being captured?”

Shino shifts Hinata minutely on his back. “Sakura-san is working with Kurenai-sensei on increasing her skill with genjutsu. Why? So that she can become a stronger shinobi. Hinata-san is the best on our team at dispelling illusions, therefore, Sakura-san practices her illusions on Hinata-san while Kiba-san and I carry them across the village.”

Tenten hums and casts an appraising eye over Sakura.

“So you two get strength training while Sakura-san and Hinata-san have to work on their focus?” Tenten puts her hands on her hips.

“How very clever!” Lee exclaims. “Sakura-san, when you have finished your exercise with Team Eight, will you please accompany Team Gai for similar exercises?”

Sakura is not yet very good at focusing on several things at once outside of the hospital. Hinata, unfortunately, is.

“I, uh -,”

“Lee is right,” Tenten says. “We don’t get a lot of practice with genjutsu users. If you’re ever not busy - " 

“I hate to break this up, but we’ve got ten minutes to run about sixty miles,” Kiba snaps, Akamaru yipping as he does. “Get on my back, pinky, we have a delivery to make.”

Sakura (elegantly) resists the urge to give Kiba another concussion for the nickname, but hops on his back nonetheless. As he launches them into the sky, she can hear Tenten call, “We’re at training ground nine after seven am!”

Between training with Tsunade, Shizune, rounds at the hospital, and biweekly meetings with Team Eight, Sakura is unsure of whether or not she actually wants to meet up with Team Gai. The part of her that is still guilty over Neji and Lee’s injuries after the failed attempt at retrieving Sasuke tells her it’s a bad idea, that her bothering them will only salt their wounds, but the girl that cut her hair during the Chuunin exams, the girl who looked the Godaime in the face and demanded to be taught isn’t ready to let her give up yet.

Still, it is awkward facing Lee, whose crush on her has not yet met its dying day. It is more awkward still facing Neji, whose stony silences are so much like Sasuke’s and yet so not. His are tempered with little smiles, banter with his temmates and teacher, and eye-rolls that are more fond than condescending. _Where was this one when you wanted to date a boy with a stick up his ass_ , Inner snidely wonders.

 Tenten is a breath of fresh air. After being vaulted between kunoichi like her shishou and senpai, then Kurenai and Hinata, not to mention a lifetime with Ino, it’s strange to meet a girl so earthy, so steady, and so warm. After Ino, Tenten is the first girl Sakura makes friends with, really makes friends with out of a sense of healthy competition and mutual respect.

Neji is the only person on Team Gai whose ability to dispel genjutsu is even remotely close to Hinata’s. Tenten’s superior abilities with chakra are the only thing that put her above Lee. At one point, Sakura catches herself going easy on him, plying him with images not to traumatize but to tease. Neji shoots her a glare so vicious it almost breaks her concentration. Tenten is cool to her that day as well. It isn’t until Gai places a firm hand on her shoulder that Sakura understands why.

Nobody grows unless they’re pushed. Sakura knows she certainly didn’t. She’s not helping Lee. She’s doing him a severe disservice as a fellow shinobi and as a friend.

So she dials it up a notch. And if it takes a day or two after that for Neji and Tenten to warm up to her again, well, it’s a small price to pay.

When she picks up her game, so does Team Gai’s sensei. Maito Gai wouldn’t be Maito Gai if he didn’t make everyone who trained with him wish they had never had the ridiculous idea of training with him.

Sakura’s katas learn katas. Her muscle memory gains muscle memory. She learns stretches that feel like contortions that only lovers in Kakashi-sensei’s dirty novels ought to be able to do. Tsunade had made her run laps around Konoha like every reasonable sensei did, but Gai made her run double what she knew she could do blindfolded and barefoot. His taijutsu lessons were practical but vicious, but every bead of sweat and cramped muscle was worth it for the look on Tsunade-shishou’s face the first time she used Gai’s Strong Fist style in a spar. 

Lee is a force of nature whose crush doesn’t give Sakura a free pass. He’s relentless and he gives her a run for her money every time they spar. She loses more often than naught. She’s still trying to find a style that fits between the Strong Fist and Tsunade’s no holds barred brawling. Lee has already settled in his technique and he’s making his way towards being a master. Sakura settles for vacillating wildly between the two, if only to hear Lee bark out a laugh when she throws him through a tree and he comes back swinging.

She’s also gotten absurdly good at dodging. It’s hard not to get better at evading a couple of boulders when Tenten can literally throw one hundred plus sharp ( _ver_ y sharp, so incredibly sharp) knives at you with pinpoint accuracy. Tenten’s motto is, if you can dodge a needle before you know it’s coming, you can dodge a fist no matter who’s throwing it. Sakura is inclined to agree. She teaches Sakura how to balance the weight of a weapon bigger than a kunai, and her face lights up with equal glee when one day Sakura picks up a tanto and something slots into place.

Neji is difficult to warm up to, just because he is second only to Sasuke in being a difficult dark haired _boy._ He isn’t too fond of her after watching her dump his cousin under seven layers of genjutsu and Sakura isn’t too fond of him for going overboard on Hinata, _and_ for how carelessly rude he was to Naruto during the Chuunin exams. But when he squints at her katas and tells her that her foot is a couple millimeters off, and when she heals a minor chakra burn after a spar, well, he’s at least a little less stiff.

* * *

 

It takes five months of bouncing between the hospital, Team Eight, and Team Gai for Sakura to realize that she is becoming truly terrifying. The thought alone is exhilarating. And she is not the only one to notice.

It’s when she’s in the hospital, listening to Ebisu reprimand Konohamaru in one ear and listening to Konohamaru protest in the other. Udon, the poor boy, waited beneath her patient hands, a nasty cut along his forearm from a fence hopping escapade gone wrong.

“Not to worry,” Sakura says, a light smile on her face. “It’s a pretty clean cut. We just have to clean it out, and then we can heal it right up.”

 Sakura goes through the motions of applying antiseptic to the wound, murmuring encouragements all the way under Azami’s watchful eye. Tsunade still thinks like a front line medic in the middle of a war, and will randomly choose days where the chakra wielding staff are only allowed to use one half or one fourth of their chakra unless there’s an emergency. Sakura heals the cut until Azami clicks her tongue, and then she gently applies a bandage over what’s left.

 “Be more careful,” she says, “you’ll have plenty of time for battle injuries when you make genin.”

Udon flushes dark red and nods before sliding off the bed, one hand hovering over his injured arm.

Ebisu nods and thanks her before he begins ushering the kids out of the room. Sakura turns to Azami, ready to ask where they’re off to next but the older woman has a wry smile on her face and her gaze fixed on something just behind her. When Sakura turns around, it’s to see Moegi still standing in the hospital room.

The nine year old’s eyes are as wide as dinner plates.

“Are you injured as well, Moegi-chan?” she asks. “Moegi-chan?”

Moegi blinks as if she’s only just realized she’s been caught staring.

“You’re so cool, Sakura-san!” she chirps, before bolting out of the room.

Sakura looks to Azami for an answer, but the Hyūga laughs at her and says, “Well it’s about time!” as she ushers Sakura to her next patient.

Sakura has to diagnose the severity of chakra depletion by blood and urine samples before she’s able to ask what Azami means.

* * *

 

Life goes on. Sakura turns thirteen. She learns six D-rank and three C-rank genjutsu. She throws wrestling and judo and Strong Fist and bar brawling together and she can maintain the upper hand for five minutes in a twelve minute spar with Lee, two minutes out of twelve with Gai-sensei. She puts on weight. A lot of weight. Hard packed muscle on her arms and legs and abdomen. She can heal a second degree burn in under two minutes. The hairs on the back of her neck stand up when someone so much as _touches_ their kunai pouch. She discards her qipao but keeps the red top, adds black shorts and a standard apron. She gets stronger. She feels stronger.

And Moegi follows her _everywhere._

Sakura wouldn’t be a kunoichi even remotely worth her salt if she didn’t notice a nine year old stalking her.

At first, she thinks she must be letting the healthy shinobi paranoia get to her. She’s in the middle of a spar with Neji, about half a second away from slamming an axe kick into the ground to see if he can sixty-four palm his way out of a _crater_ when she hears a whoop from the treeline. The two seconds her attention is averted is all Neji needs to slip inside her defenses and jam the tenketsu in her right arm so hard they’ll be bruised for days.

If Sakura had any teacher other than Tsunade, whose brute strength is only enhanced by chakra and not created by it, she’d be screwed. If she had not spent a little less than a year with taijutsu specialists who almost never used chakra, she would be twice as screwed.

As it is, Sakura ignores the throb of her blocked chakra and swings hard with her left arm. She pulls her punch a couple of inches from Neji’s abdomen and releases a burst of chakra that knocks the breath out of him and shoves him a good couple meters away from her.

After their spar, Neji nudges Sakura’s arm as they watch Tenten and Lee form the Seal of Confrontation before their spar.

“You got distracted during our spar,” he says, “you heard something and that gave me an opening.”

Open water bottle halfway to her mouth, Sakura grunts in affirmation.

“Whoever made the sound is still over there.”

Sakura narrows her eyes, then shrugs and downs half her water.

“Probably just somebody else training. It was silly to get distracted.”

Neji hums noncommittally and motions for her arm. He examines the tenkentsu points he blocked, veins bulging as he watches her chakra try to settle at the ready after she healed them.

It happens again when Sakura is elbow deep in the Konoha undergrowth, chakra centered around her nose as she sniffs for Kiba and Shino. Kurenai had pitted she and Hinata against the boys in a game of capture the flag, and Hinata is just to her left, Byakugan range extended to a couple hundred meters in all directions. She has a hand on Hinata’s bare forearm, writing in field hand what their next move should be when Sakura hears a sneeze from above.

Instinct grabs both kunoichi by the throat and launches them upward. Sakura’s got three shuriken in her hand and Hinata has settled into a Gentle Fist stance before a shock of orange hair tumbles from the tree and crashes into the bushes.

It’s Moegi.

Sakura is confused.

“Sorry to interrupt, Sakura-san! I was just on a, uh, training exercise and I fell! I’ll be going now!”

The kid bolts.

“That was weird,” she says.

Hinata, well versed in the art of running from the people one admires gives Sakura a little smile and says, “N-not so weird, Sakura-san.”

 Sakura huffs, and prepares to hide again when a holler from across the training field catches them both by surprise.

Sakura groans.

“Kiba has the flag, doesn’t he?”

Hinata laughs and says, “Y-yes. H-he does.”

For a little while after that, Moegi disappears. Or maybe Sakura stops noticing her. The Chuunin Exams are rapidly approaching and Sakura is a lone genin without a team.

Ino approaches her and asks her to join Team Ten since Shikamaru passed the exam the first time around, and Sakura spends months with Ino, Chouji, and Asuma-sensei making Ino-Saku-Cho something appropriately horrifying.

When what remains of the Konoha Eleven heads out of the village gates bright and early, Moegi makes her reappearance.

There is small talk, cheerful banter between Team Gai, Team Eight, and Team Ten as they begin their journey. Sakura isn’t sure she’d have ever been this close to her year mates if the departure of her own team hadn’t forced her hand.

She’s just signed her name on Kotetsu’s clipboard when she hears her name shouted from the other side of the gates.

“Sakura-san! Sakura-san!”

Sakura looks up and there’s Moegi, at six in the morning, running like she’s being chased. Sakura looks back at Ino, who gives her a shrug that says, ‘we’ll wait for you, but not for long’ before she jogs to meet Moegi halfway.

“What is it, Moegi-chan? Are you alright?”

Moegi is panting hard, but she has something bundled tightly in her hands.

“Well, I -,”

She seems to struggle for a second before all at once she bows, extends her hands, and shouts, “Good luck at the Chuunin Exams!”

In her palms is a little black and green katsumori, laid with glimmering gold thread. Sakura can swear she can hear Ino coo behind her. 

“This is for me?”

 Moegi nods furiously.

 “Thank you, Moegi-chan.”

 She gingerly takes the charm from Moegi’s hand, awestruck that the girl would care enough to do something so kind. She places the charm in her medical supplies pouch, warmth and confusion suffusing in her chest.

 “Thank you very much.”

 “I hope you do well at the exams,” Moegi continues, “and return to Konoha a full fledged chuunin!”

 Sakura smiles and says, “I hope so, too.”

 “Time to roll out, Forehead!” Ino calls. “Suna’s waiting! Tell your fangirl to go back to bed!”

 A vein throbs in Sakura’s forehead and Moegi turns an even harsher shade of red. Sakura reaches down, and puts her hand lightly on top of Moegi’s sleep mussed hair.

 “Thank you for believing in me, Moegi-chan.”

* * *

 

 Sakura rubs her fingers over the fabric of the charm for luck before the written exam, before the practical, and before the fight. She passes with flying colors.

 They all pass, spectacularly. They put on a show the likes of which Suna has never seen before. All of them say with every drop of blood, every bead of sweat, you thought Orochimaru killed Konoha. He didn’t. He couldn’t. No one can.

 They’re all punch drunk with victory, with pride. Sakura’s fourteenth birthday is in Suna the day before they leave for home, and they celebrate by finding her as much anmitsu as she can stomach. They lavish her with little trinkets afforded by their genin salaries. Tenten oils and polishes her tanto; Hinata finds her a gory book of Suna folktales; Ino gets her a bracelet with a cosmos flower charm; Lee finds her a scroll of katas for a taijutsu style developed for women of her size; Neji gives her a basic kit of desert poisons; Kiba gives her a stuffed cactus plush; Shino gives her an actual cactus; and Chouji gives her a coupon to his family’s barbecue restaurant.

 Kurenai promises to teach her three B-rank genjutsu if she applies herself. Gai will help her work the scroll that Lee got her into her training regime. Asuma buys her, her first drink. She’s been past the legal age for almost two years now, but she’s never more than given alcohol a passing glance. She orders something much too sweet, drinks the whole thing because it tastes like juice, then promptly burns the alcohol in her liver the exact way shishou does.

She has her first kiss that night from a brown haired boy from Suna whose ribs she broke in her final match. His mouth is sweet and her head is spinning and Ino is shouting about fraternizing with the enemy while Kiba shouts “Alright, pinky!” loud enough for the whole Suna civilian quarter to hear.

 They return home in glory.

 Moegi is waiting at the gate.

 She is chattering with Izumo and Kotetsu , when the men both look to the troupe of newly minted chuunin traipsing towards the gate. Moegi rushes to meet them and skids to a stop in front of Sakura.

 “You passed!” she shouts.

 Sakura grins so broad she feels like her jaw might crack off her skull.

 “I was rooting for you!” Moegi says. “Me and Tsunade-sama and Shizune-san! We knew you could do it!”

 Sakura only gives herself a moment to wonder when exactly Moegi found the time to pester both her teachers, but the pride bubbling in her chest is enough to keep her from saying anything out loud.

 “Thank you for believing in me, Moegi,” she says. “The charm you gave me really worked.”

 Moegi’s eyes go big. “You think so, Sakura-san?”

 “Yeah.”

 “Good! I’m glad!”

* * *

 

While Naruto is away, Sakura turns fourteen and comes home a chuunin of Konohagakure. She is allowed to begin storing chakra for her Byakugō Seal and Tsunade lets her summon Katsuyu without a contract. She steps foot into Shikkotsu Forest, Katsuyu spits acid into her eyes, and she must prove herself worthy for the great slug to heal.

Moegi becomes insistent.

 Sakura wonders how Naruto ever handled having Konohamaru around. Moegi isn’t a pest, per se, not in the way that Konohamaru is. She’s twice as quiet as him for one, and about three times as clever, just as confident, and has gotten terribly good at watching Sakura from a distance.

 She rarely shows up at the hospital for fear of the Godaime’s wrath, but if Sakura is on any training ground anywhere in the village, Moegi is not far behind.

 If Sakura needs to patch up a sparring wound but her hands are dirty, Moegi is thirty feet away with hand sanitizer. If Sakura finishes her bottle of water, Moegi is in a tree with a full canteen. If Sakura notices that her weapons are getting dull, Moegi has already placed the whetstone in her hands. When Sakura is sweating, Moegi has a towel. When Sakura is on her period, Moegi has a tampon.

 The issue is not that Moegi is everywhere at once. The issue is that Moegi is always there precisely when Sakura is even remotely inconvenienced. That? Is terrifying accuracy for a kid still two years away from making genin.

 “So she has a little crush on you, so what?” Tsunade says to Sakura, who is elbow deep in a filing cabinet.

 “As long as she isn’t interrupting your training or your work at the hospital, I don’t see what’s wrong.”

 Sakura grimaces when she is gifted with her twelfth paper cut _today_ while looking for a copy of a copy of suggestions for strengthening the trade embargo on Kumo.

 “It’s just strange,” she says, doing her best to keep (more) blood off of official documents. “Naruto is the type to have fanboys. Just look at Konohamaru. And Sasuke-kun – ”

 She stops herself, weighs her words. It’s been two years but his defection is still a sore spot with Tsunade, who nearly lost six genin and one chuunin to one boy’s choice.

 “He had a gaggle of girls following him around,” Tsunade says, blithely. “The Uchiha were always that way. Boys and girls. It was the same when I was your age.”

 Sakura releases the breath she had been holding slowly through her nose. She keeps looking for the file.

 “Then you know what I mean, shishou. I’m not really the type to have someone walking behind me, asking for my attention. I’m not like those two.”

 Tsunade looks up from the rosters she had been perusing and pins Sakura with a gaze that makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

 “Why aren’t you like them, Sakura?”

 Sakura bites her lower lip, and for the first time in months Inner curls like throat clogging smoke through her mind.

  _You know why you know why you know why you know why you know why_

“I’m not a powerhouse,” is what she says out loud. “I don’t have a kekkei genkai or huge chakra reserves.”

  _Weak weak boring little girl paper ninja paper ninja ugly big forehead_

“I was only put on Team Seven to balance it out.”

  _Dead center dead center nothing special about you too good to be the worst but not good enough to even scratch the top ten not good enough not good enough_

“They’ve been amazing since we first graduated the academy. I’ve kind of always just been – there.”

  _All you do is walk up trees and cut your hair and cry that’s it what are you worth what are you worth you can’t protect yourself you can’t protect your village you can’t protect anyone what are you doing what are you doing what are you doing_

“Hm.”

 Sakura grinds her teeth.

 “Well, out of the three person cell that is Team Seven, you are the only one with the rank of chuunin.”

 Her eyes snap to where her hokage is staring her down.

 “You are the only one studying a form of ninjutsu that requires chakra control in the ninety-fifth percentile. You are one in a precious small handful of ninja make a contract with Katsuyu. You’re the second person living to begin forming a Byakugō Seal. You’ve more or less invented a taijutsu style to suit your needs when you discovered none suited them. You are a capable, talented shinobi.”

 Tsunade tilts her head to the side and raises one fine blonde brow.

 “And now,” she says, grin toying over her pink lips, “others are starting to see it, too.”

 (Sakura doesn’t cry in her shishou’s office, she _doesn’t._ )

 She’s a little less suspicious of Moegi after that.

 She smiles at the girl more, asks her about her day, encourages scabby knees to heal faster and tells her which stands serve the best umeboshi. She never tells Moegi that boys are mean to her because they like her and encourages the spy games she continues to play with Konohamaru and Udon.

 She encourages her to do something a bit more practical with her hair and insists on walking her home when it gets very dark outside. She treats the pre-genin to tea and anko dumplings and gets into jan-ken-pon competitions worthy of Kakashi and Gai-sensei’s eternal rivalry.

 When Moegi’s bottom lip quivers and she musters up the strength to ask, “Will you look at my katas and tell me if they’re good, Sakura-onee-san?” Sakura smiles through a heart bursting with affection and says, “Of course.”

 She adjusts Moegi’s stances (“Lower, really sit in it, feel your pelvic bowl sink toward the earth. Your center of gravity is lower than the boys. Use that.”), raises her arms (“You should start lifting weights as soon as you can.”), kicks out her feet a little wider (“Lower, Moegi-chan, lower”).

 When she moves incorrectly, Sakura tells her exactly what she did wrong and exactly how to fix it. Tsunade doesn’t suffer fools and Kakashi left the slow behind, but Kurenai was gentle and Asuma asked questions until she could explain the topic backwards and Gai was so, earnestly kind.

 When Moegi asks her to help her adjust her aim, Sakura doesn’t say no. And when Moegi asks if Sakura wouldn’t mind looking at her shadow clone technique for imperfections, Sakura says of course she will. When Moegi asks for help increasing her stamina, Sakura tells her what to do. When Moegi asks for a taijutsu spar, Sakura puts the girl on her back in under a minute, then walks Moegi through every weakness in her defense and encourages her towards ferocity and away from hesitation.

 When Sakura was ten years old, she had let an unrelenting crush on a boy who wouldn’t look at her twice ruin her first and best friendship. She didn’t have anyone she looked up to, not really. No one she aspired to be like, no one who made her want to be a better shinobi. Moegi is already miles ahead of where she used to be and if Sakura was even a small part of that, then, well maybe her mess of a genin career was worth it.

* * *

 

 Sakura is fifteen and is walking out of an operating theatre when a twelve year old girl is being rushed into the hospital on a gurney. Her heart clenches hard in her chest, but no, there’s Moegi, running doggedly after, spewing apologies.

 Azami, no longer Sakura’s supervisor, sidles up beside her and bumps her hip against her chuunin comrade.

 “Oh you didn’t hear? During the genin practical, Moegi-chan apparently threw poor Hotaru-chan right through a practice dummy.”

 Sakura is caught between pride and shock.

 “Why were there practice dummies in the practical exam arena?”

 Azami gives a very un-Hyūga like snort.

 “There weren’t.”

 Sakura winces. “Oh.”

 “If you’re a second Tsunade,” Azami muses, tapping her clipboard against Sakura’s shoulder, “Moegi’s definitely a second you.”

Sakura snorts herself and rubs her forehead where her purple diamond will one day be sharp and bright and dangerous as her shishou’s.

 “Hopefully,” she says smiling, “she’ll be even worse.”

**Author's Note:**

> One of these days the bug'll bite me and I'll write an entire Slug Sage Sakura 500k epic but that day is not today. It's 3:32am and I've been writing this since like … 9:30pm.
> 
> Sakura knows where the Hyūga blind spot is because she's a medic and she's gotta. Kurenai knows because she's Hinata's sensei and she's gotta. 
> 
> Onamori are good luck charms! Moegi gives Sakura a katsumori, a success lucky charm. If I'm using this charm incorrectly PLEASE let me know and I will immediately fix it. Google is only as helpful as it can be and is as fallible as the humans that created it. 
> 
> There…..may or may not be a sequel from Moegi's pov now that i'm finished and realize that this fic is sorely lacking enough people going catatonic with awe at how amazing sakura is
> 
> come bother me @ voregoisie on tumblr dot com
> 
> thank you for reading x !


End file.
